Rating: 
Summary: Lots of original techniques you won't find elsewhere
Review: This book is loaded with great techniques that you won't find in any other book. Absolutely loaded. Take the statistics stuff, for example. No where else will you find so many useful functions (medians, anyone? runs and regions?) and so much code you can just drop into place and use. The OLE Automation chapter is similarly chalk full of original and useful code. All throughout the book you find reams and reams of fresh, astonishingly powerful code. The book says there are 600+ examples and I don't doubt it. It's worth twice the price for the code alone. Add to this the expert advice and techniques, and you have the best SQL Server book money can buy.
Rating: 
Summary: Was expecting more
Review: Essentially a rehash of SQL techniques that exist in many other books. I was hoping of insight into (with examples) various types of SQL queries. However, that being said, if you can buy only one SQL book, this would be the one.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: I'm one who always has to refer back to the book for syntax and usage. Ken's Transact-SQL book is spot on as a quick reference book, but he also gives a great amount of details on each topic -- RELEVANT details. More technical books out there need to emulate his balance. This book makes a great reference AND a great read -- cover to cover.
Rating:
Summary: Little Disappointing
Review: I could not find the basic Replace string function, which is very essential to do a find-and-replace in a select statement. Also, the font is size is small and irritating to read.
May be this book is better, because lot many others may be worse.
I will give a 2.5
Rating:
Summary: Best all around book on SQL Server
Review: If you buy just one book on SQL Server, this should be it. It teaches the product from the perspective of the language Transact-SQL. There's no better way to learn it. Everything that you can make the server do can be boiled down to something in the language. Not only does the book cover Transact-SQL in a depth no other book does, but it cover other relevant technologies such as Cursors, Transactions, Full-Text Search and myriad of others. This is THE book to read if you want to know the product inside out.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: The thing that blew me away about this book is how well written it is. Henderson has a way of explaining the most difficult concepts is prose that is nitpickingly detailed, yet friendly and readable. The explanation and examples of tsql functions that do statististical calculations was marvelous. Absolutely excellent. The same is true of the rest of the book. It's definitely head and shoulders about the other tsql books out there, especially the one I got last week by Moreau and co. which I am considering returning.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: very handy reference. Between this, MS SQL books online and occasionally the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Administrator's Companion, I've rarely found a topic I couldn't find an answer to.
Rating:
Summary: The best there is
Review: This book is so chalk full of stuff not found in other books I don't know where to begin. Every chapter has insights that could be books unto themselves. Take the Undocumented chapter for example. It could be its own book. Or the Cursors chapter. Or the Transactions chapter. Or Fulltext. Over and over this book delivers like no other. Definitely what it claims to be: a guru's guide to Transact-Sql.
Rating:
Summary: A work of art
Review: This book changed the way I think about Transact-SQL as a language. It showed me ways of doing things that I never knew existed. It has techniques you will find nowhere else. My favorite things:- sp_generate_script - an ingenious piece of code no DBA should be without - the OLE Automation chapter - I had no idea you could do so many wonderful things with OLE Automation and T-SQL - the ranking and set queries - very clever use of some of the language's more essoteric features - the quotes that open each chapter - insightful and even downright funny at times - Henderson's dry wit and no-frills style of writing - this has produced my favorite technical book in years - Too many other things too numerous to list The book is a work of art. Get your copy now and start learning from the guru.
Rating:
Summary: Stuff you won't find anywhere else
Review: This book is loaded with techniques you won't find in any other book. I've read it about five times now and every time I always find something new, some new technique I haven't seen before. The author gets every ounce of power out of TransactSQL. He shows everything you can possibly do with the language and how to do it best. For example I haven't seen anyone else cover regions, runs, and statistical functions. I haven't seen anyone show how to do arrays in TransactSQL. Or crosstabs. This is a book you should have if you want to learn the technix of the gurus.
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